I’ve been in a handful of plays in my time, both in school and in local community theatres. On the whole I don’t generally go out for musicals that much. There are a couple of reasons for this; I have what is generally called a ‘chorus’ voice, and I find most musicals to be pretty prosaic. Nice non-challenging larks that make you smile, give you a little flash, tug a bit at the heart and send you on your way. Chicago is atypical in that the flash is provided by the knives in the character’s smiles, and the glint of guns in the half-light of low morals.

It’s impressive that the story and lyrics are prescient today having originally been produced in the 70’s. With the national (and international I suppose) fascination with the spate of flash-in-pan faux stardom, it’s little wonder that I found myself constantly relating an old story to the world around me. Reality television is pretty much an oxymoron; nevertheless it is a particularly American dream to get famous without really doing anything to earn it.

Roxie Hart (Renee Zelwiger) has just that obsession, all right, so it’s not really fair to say that she doesn’t do anything. She is a singer or she would be if she were not just like a ridiculous amount of other young women with the same stars in their eyes. With nothing to set her apart she has pretty much resigned herself to climbing the ladder to stardom on her back. Even in this though her choices are, to say the least, poorly made. As the film open we learn that the man she’s currently working is actually not a player in the club world at all.

Discovering this deception sends the already unbalanced Roxie right round’ the bend. She begins to fashion her life as a cabaret act performing production numbers about whatever it is she happens to be going through. This device is used to great effect to show just how stupid American culture can be at times. In a way Chicago succeeds where Stone’s Natural Born Killers failed. It makes it clear how stupid it is that we wrap ourselves in these stories of humans being bad to each other without going over the top and becoming just one more sensationalistic part of the problem.

The music is catchy, the lyrics are sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, and the actors acquit themselves rather well as dancers and singers. Even Richard Gere who, for the most part, I can take or leave alone does wonderful work with the oily lawyer Billy Flynn. (Am I the only one who kept thinking of Mickey Finn? Probably I am…) All of the performers did there own dancing and singing which is remarkable simply because of the amount of work it obviously took.

As Roxie becomes the hot killer of the moment, everyone decides they want a piece of her action. Enter Momma Morton (Queen Latifah) and Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones) her guides through the underworld of celebrity. Mamma is the head guard of the prison that Roxie finds herself in, although that is really just her side job. For the most part she acts as a sort of consultant for the most spectacular of her charges. Velma is very much like Roxie except she has been living in the world longer and has fewer stars in her eyes. She starts out trying to ignore Roxie, hoping she will go away. She is a pragmatist at heart though, so when Roxie’s fame begins to eclipse her own, she willingly hitches herself on for the ride.

Between all of this is buried a thread of just how transient and hollow this fame really is. Twice both Roxie and Velma both are threatened by someone else’s story being bigger that there own. And one particularly chilling plot point comes in the form of another inmate who no one ever even notices because she does not speak the language. Metaphorically speaking, she doesn’t know how to work the system, so whether she deserves it or not, she pays a price that neither of the main characters ever come close to.

When all is said and done, Chicago is a slick dark amorality tale that has just enough humor in it to make up for the darkness inherent in the characters.